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Matabeleland’s action time is now

Unless we start actively responding to our challenges, we will not be masters of our destiny but mere rhetorical speakers. For a better tomorrow, we need good preparation work today; there is no time to look back and feel sorry for ourselves.

Contrived and lame excuses will not take us anywhere; our movement can ill-afford to be less than vigilant in combating bigotry, intolerance and hatred that may compromise our decision-making process for our future. We need a calm, open debate to drive the Mthwakazi project. Let us not sit by and wait for things to happen to us; we need to plan where we will be when things do happen. Our focus now should be to figure out how the world will be tomorrow and then bring that world into the present so that we can do something about it today – that will be the defining moment of our political revolution.

Let us take responsibility and initiative in deciding what freedom in Matabeleland would mean and then prioritising our efforts around the most important elements. There is a fundamental distinction between enthusiasm on one hand and strategic and operational effectiveness on the other. Clarity of our goals is essential, we need to be clear on what freedom will be like to us. We want to live in a country where we will be able to freely carry out our ideas and values.

We should by now be moving away from a strategy centred on the negative – a strategy focusing on what has not been done to one looking at what is to be done. We need to devise and set in train systems that place mutual responsibility to both leaders and the follows. We want power derived from achievement not from political titles. When people are backed by authority that goes with positions they hold they run the risk of slipping into dictatorships. Instead of titles dictating power, competence, effectiveness, innovation and principled standing should earn people authority and respect.

The Mthwakazi groups need to recognise that they do not represent themselves but Mthwakazi; it is therefore important that out of respect of their constituencies they start to listen to that constituency, open lines of communication between themselves, identify and create efficient and effective alliances amongst themselves. The current fragmentation hinders the match to true freedom.